Mitsical Ways

So she wakes me at 3 o'clock
wakes me to coffee and home
wakes me again a little later
and the coffee's still warm
strays from her universe
with word and grace
dressed as bandit or clown --
I notice all
and so much more
in this domesticity unanticipated
but welcomed like a child
walking into fairy tale anthologies.

Taking care

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Times of confidences come to me
as gardens from another planet
unnamed but clearly mapped
with libraries and books
songs and stories that would at will
break into flavors that soothed our tongues
and cured it of the harsh-word curse.

The claims of seniority and equality of status
length of knowing and love,
of poetry, places, phases and passion
did not count;
I belonged to her, through and through
then and forever, non-negotiable.

But we slipped, she and I
into orbits that seldom crossed paths
and were shrugged off
in the nonchalance of knowing
or things more pressing.

Old words torment the vacancies
threadbare histories nibble
and the edges of memory wince
in the inevitability of this time.

And then skipping through a paddy field
uncluttering doubts with fairytale swish
she sprinkles the universe
with an eau de cologne smile.

She has always taken care
to take care of me.

Carnival of the vague

Raindrops wearing bird-song shoes
intermittently measured cobblestone byways,
a ghost train whistled to a ship without sailor —
the wind told the ghost guard ‘undeliverable’
and the ghost engine driver told the railway track
‘we know better, don’t we?’
An encyclopedia opened to an empty page,
poetry flew from a television screen,
the turmeric turned in silence in accommodating soils,
burnt out matchsticks decided to set up camp
and a caterpillar in a faltering voice asked
‘can I stay in your plantain peel tent until the night is done?’
A lipstick stain danced around the rim of a glass
a gaze turned red wine into white
and memory-blush made it crimson, by and by;
some words were probably said, but I am not sure
for there is no stall for convictions
in the carnival of the vague.